Guild have followed
up their 1st volume of American
Light Orchestras with this second volume,
subtitled Travellin’ Light after
the sparkling piece by Victor Young
which opens this collection. Guild have
cast their net widely and this disc
features some twenty different ensembles,
all the tracks having been recorded
in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

It is difficult nowadays
for us to realise quite how ubiquitous
light music was, thanks first of all
to the radio and then to LP. A number
of ensembles on this disc made their
name as radio broadcasters in the 1930s
and 1940s before expanding to LPs in
the 1950s. Of course this situation
did not last and light music orchestras
were left behind as the younger record-buying
public became more interested in rock-and-roll.

Show tunes feature
quite strongly. The title track from
the film ‘Laura’ is played by David
Rose and his orchestra; Rose himself
is credited with scoring some 36 films.
Morton Gould gives us an attractive
arrangement of Limehouse Blues
from ‘André Charlot’s Revue of
1924’. Andre Kostelanetz was notable
for his imaginative arrangements and
his version of Mine from the
Gershwin musical ‘Let ‘Em Eat Cake’
is no exception.

The Continental
from ‘The Gay Divorcee’ is still pretty
well known nowadays; here played by
the Boston Pops Orchestra. But I
Love Louisa from ‘The Band Wagon’
is less well known. It is played on
this disc by The Pittsburgh Strings,
in fact the string section of the Pittsburgh
Symphony Orchestra. This use of string
only ensembles was a feature of the
1950s; Victor Young and his Singing
Strings appear playing Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo
from the film ‘Lili’ and The Pittsburgh
Strings reappear with The Piccolino
from ‘Top Hat’.

Cole Porter’s I
concentrate on you is played by
Kostelanetz and His Orchestra, one of
the few groups to appear twice in this
compilation. The attractive final track
is What’s Good About Goodbye’
from the film ‘Casbah’; not a film that
is familiar to me but the song was co-written
by Harold Arlen, which is always a good
sign.

There is an interesting
clutch of novelty numbers including
Kreisler’s Tambourine Chinois
and Morton Gould’s arrangement of Parade
of the Wooden Soldiers with Gould
conducting, not his own orchestra but
the Robin Hood Dell Orchestra.

All in all this is
an attractive compilation. A remarkable
feature is the uniformity of style across
these rather disparate ensembles. Perhaps
the selection will not create many new
light music devotees but it will certainly
make existing ones very happy.

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